What matters right now in business. From WSJ reporters around the world.

Europe’s top court decided yesterday that individuals have the right to ask Google to remove links to content containing their name — a victory for advocates of the so-called right to be forgotten, a legal concept that has been gaining support in Europe in recent years.

But if you want to trace the “right to be forgotten” to its roots, you need to go way further back: to “a concept born out of 19th-century French and German legal protections that once permitted honor-based dueling,” the WSJ reports.

Dueling? Can you really draw a line from the old-timey right of an aggrieved man to demand a gunfight to today’s newly-developing right to be scrubbed from Google results? Some legal scholars say you can, but it’s a complicated, squiggly line: The European Union consists of member states with dozens of distinct legal traditions, each with their own histories and specifics. Talk of “European” legal concepts is going to be generalizing by definition.

“Liking” something on Facebook is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday, reviving a closely watched case over the extent to which the Constitution shields what we say on social media.

The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said former sheriff’s deputy in Hampton, Va., can sue the city’s sheriff for allegedly firing him in retaliation for “liking” the Facebook page of another candidate for his office.

“Liking” the campaign page, the court said, was the “Internet equivalent of displaying a political sign in one’s front yard. . . . . . Read More »